With his series dedicated to the daily lives of Roma families in Florence, the Italian photographer was able to convince the jury and win the 1995 Leica Oskar Barnack Award.
In Gianni Berengo Gardin’s photos of massive boats lumbering through the lagoon and the city’s fragile canals on their way to the international cruise ship terminal, there’s no mistaking his perspective. Passing by historic squares, churches and buildings, the ships look like colossal eyesores, obscuring everything in their path.
There they are again, the perpetual Italian migrants. They wait on a platform at the Milan train station in 1970, their many suitcases secured with rope, their bags filled to the brim. A box of panettone, a Milanese holiday specialty, accompanies this family of travelers, suggesting Christmastime. Dressed for the cold, the family of five — parents, children, and an older woman wearing black from head to toe — gaze to the right, pondering perhaps their unknown destinies. We see them in Gianni Berengo Gardin’s photograph, shot at mid-distance from above, a portrait of Italy as a migrant nation.
